3181 CRITICAL NOTICES OF NEW PUBLICATIONS. 



ing of him what works were best adapted to qualify him for the 

 practice of medicine — viz., to read Don Quixote — has been seized 

 upon, by " mere practical men," as they are called, as a proof of his 

 contempt for medical literature in general. But, as the recommen- 

 dation came from one eminently versed in the opinions of his pre- 

 decessors, and perfectly estimating their fantastic and air-built crea- 

 tions, he may rather be supposed sarcastically to recommend for 

 them a similar purgation to that to which Cervantes subjected the 

 prevalent literature of his age. The medical treatises of this great 

 man, at the same time that their existence practically refutes such 

 inferences drawn from words hastily and carelessly let fall, contain 

 in them internal evidence that his zeal for the observation of nature 

 was founded on, as directed by, a familiar acquaintance with the 

 best medical literature of the day. 



If we consider the qualities, moral and physical, whose perfection 

 the investigation of disease imperiously demands, and the range of 

 collateral science requisite to constitute a good observer of the ope- 

 rations of nature, we cannot too strongly insist on the propriety of 

 Dr. Thorburn's recommendation, in the commencement of the vo- 

 lume under notice, that an advanced period of their medical studies 

 should be appropriated, by students, to their hospital practice. Were 

 this recommendation more generally followed, we should not so often 

 see the walk of the hospital converted into a morning lounge ; 

 almost justifying the propriety of the expression which levels this 

 important part of the study of our profession with the mechanical 

 operations of the military drill. 



The following are pertinent observations upon the above subject, 

 and we extract them as further presenting a fair specimen of the 

 style of the volume : — 



" Should pupils be indiscriminately admitted to the Clinique ? — ^Various bene- 

 fits would result were observers not admitted to the cUnique, till after pro- 

 fiting by a determinate order of study. It would then become a matter of 

 ambition, with the majority, to come, at least, up to, if not to exceed, the 

 standard enjoined. Many, it is to be feared, are hospital peripatetics, 

 rather than clinical observers. Nine-tenths of students prematurely " walk- 

 ing the hospitals,'* either imbibe erroneous notions, or, from inability to ap- 

 preciate what passes, get disgusted or indifferent to what, when rightly con- 

 ducted, constitutes the most interesting of all their studies. Moreover, by 

 pursuing at the outset — and the chances are that he will pursue— a faulty 

 method, the pupil contracts loose and careless habits of observing, and 

 thence self-duped, aids by deceiving or misleading others. The ludicrous 

 and painful differences of opinions, which three or more practitioners will 

 pronounce respecting the same case, at a consultation, are surely chargeable, 

 much less to the fact of medicine being a science of probabilities, than to dif- 

 ference in the powers of attention, perception, comparison, and judgment ; 

 and, above all, to the different degrees of discipline to which these powers 

 have been submitted. Hence, the necessity that all intending to practise 

 medicine should study under trained masters; hence, likewise, it is that 

 young surgeons and physicians hived off from the great schools, where bed- 

 side MEDICINE is systematically taught by able professors, possess infinitely 

 more experience, properly so called, than many who have been thirty years in 

 private practice. Years are not the measure of experience, as frequently 



